History Main / BewilderingPunishment

Unless the character is showing ItsAllAboutMe or MoralMyopia or even worse ButForMeItWasTuesday -- which are possible -- this is a sympathetic characterization. An innocent character taken for a crime that no-one will identify is common, especially in RevengeByProxy, SinsOfOurFathers, and CriminalDoppelganger, but not the only possibility.

* In ''Fanfic/MultiversalConstants'', when Talia goes and greets the teenaged counterpart of her son Damian, she's taken aback by the sheer ''hostility'' he shows her, coupled with a stubborn refusal to trust her. She doesn't get why he acts this way until a telepath lets her see [[OffingTheOffspring exactly how bad her counterpart was]].

* Poor [[spoiler:Gale]] has no idea what hit him in the ''Series/BreakingBad'' third season finale, although [[spoiler:someone as smart as him who's helping to build an industrial level meth lab should be smart enough to know that there might be unseen dangers in working for rich criminals]].
* ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'': In "[[Recap/TheDickVanDykeShowS3E5AllAboutEavesdropping All About Eavesdropping]]", not knowing that Rob and Laura eavesdropped on them while they were saying some negative things, Jerry and Millie are utterly confused when they come over and behave stiffly and coldly. They become even more confused during charades when Laura makes some hostile gestures and Rob gives some bizarre guesses. Neither of them come close to guessing what it was.

* In one episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'', the VictimOfTheWeek is revealed to have had an affair before she was beaten into a coma. However, due to the extent of the brain damage, she loses all memory of the affair, so when she wakes up, she is extremely confused and upset about why her husband is acting so cold towards her.

* Played with in the ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E28ANicePlaceToVisit "A Nice Place to Visit"]]. An unrepentant criminal is sent to a 5-star hotel paradise with a casino where he wins every bet and women who lavish him with attention. He's completely confused for weeks, wondering what he did that re-balanced his karma, until his jailer reveals that the eternal catering to every whim (to the point where it [[VictoryIsBoring bores him]] and [[NoChallengeEqualsNoSatisfaction gives him no pleasure]]) is what makes it Hell.

* Casshern of ''Anime/CasshernSins'' has no idea why he's woken up in a world that despises him, full of half-crazed robots who believe they'll be saved from destruction if they [[ImAHumanitarian eat his flesh]] [[ImmortalityImmorality and become immortal]]. Of course, it's no secret that this is ultimately because he ''made'' the world that way, but he has no memory of his actions, [[YouKnowWhatYouDid and there are precious few willing to elaborate on what exactly Casshern did and why]] before trying to kill him. Making things worse is the fact that [[SuperpoweredEvilSide he goes into a mindless berserk rage]] if his life is in genuine danger, exacerbating his reputation as a harbinger of death and destruction.
* In ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'', Othinus briefly traps Touma Kamijou in an alternate universe where he's Public Enemy #1. Everybody in the entire world hates him and tries to kill him on sight, even his own parents. Until he's pulled out of it, nobody will explain to him why they're trying to kill him.
* Shinji Ikari in ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion 3.0'': after he wakes up from being extracted from Unit-01, everyone treats him with intense dislike and barely acknowledges his existence, leading to him wondering just what is going on that's making everyone act that way. It isn't until halfway through the movie that he gets an answer: [[spoiler:his actions at the end of the last movie inadvertently caused Third Impact, and although Kaworu stopped the Impact before its completion, the world still pretty much died. The survivors have been living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland for the past 14 years because of what he did, and they've lost all sympathy they once had for him.]]

* At the end of ''ComicBook/ArkhamAsylumLivingHell'', Batman suggests the entire experience was another incident with the Scarecrow's fear gas. Finding this entirely logical rather than the possibility that demons from Hell literally took over the Asylum, Dr. Arkham has Scarecrow tossed into solitary.

* Pretty much any incarnation of ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' features this. Edmond has no idea why he's imprisoned until many years have passed in Chateau D'if. Then he's out for some serious ''revenge''.

* In ''Series/{{Loki|2021}}'' this is the specialty of the Time Variance Authority. Their goal is to make sure that all reality follows a single "Sacred Timeline", and they quickly imprison, try, and eliminate anyone who causes a reality to diverge from it. Of course, the TVA's existence is secret, almost no one even knows there are multiple realities, and no one knows when [[ForWantOfANail actions they're taking would create such a divergence]], so from their perspective TVA agents kidnap them out of nowhere and claim some random action of theirs was a crime they didn't even know it was possible to commit.

* One episode of ''Series/StargateSG1'' has a member of a planet the team gates to put Teal'c on trial. All they know at first is that it's for a crime he committed when he was First Prime of Apophis. Unfortunately, [[ButForMeItWasTuesday Teal'c was part of a number of atrocities while First Prime]], and it takes a while for him to remember the event in question, and even longer to recall the specifics.

* The Literature/BookOfJob (believed to be [[OlderThanDirt the oldest]] book of ''Literature/TheBible'') famously has this as its central premise. Job suffers several rapid-fire calamities, and his [[WithFriendsLikeThese friends]] and even his wife insist he must have done something truly awful to deserve it. Job maintains that he's been perfectly upright and even calls out God to explain Himself. God's answer is basically "[[OmniscientMoralityLicense I'm God, you're not, deal with it.]]" He does eventually reward Job's faith by replacing all that he had lost. [[GodIsEvil Including his loved ones that God slew as part of the test.]]

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' the aeons provide both punishments and rewards, but both are equally bewildering. They exist to maintain balance, with various types concerned with balancing different things such as darkness and light, knowledge and ignorance, creation and oblivion. They apply their efforts based on the balance of the entire universe using metrics that are completely opaque, and do not bother trying to explain or justify their actions. This is particularly obvious in the case of the akhana aeons which balance life, as from the perspective of everybody else it wanders around murdering or healing people totally at random, having somehow determined their current state represents an imbalance.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' has them accidentally discovering a new swear word, which they proceed to use constantly. Ms. Keane hears them say it in class and punishes them, but of course [[InnocentSwearing the girls don't know it's a bad word]], and when they ask her what they did, she answers, "[[YouKnowWhatYouDid You know perfectly well what you did!]]"
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' has Angelica overhear a DepravedKidsShowHost using a curse word to describe the children she works with and, thinking it's the show's new special phrase, [[InnocentSwearing repeats it to her parents]]. She gets in trouble for it repeatedly, including when she tries to get her dad to tell her exactly which word in the sentence is the "bad" one. [[spoiler:By the end of the episode, she's still not entirely sure why the word's bad. Her dad just says that it "makes people feel bad".]]

%%** And this trope is pretty much par for the course with Butters and his [[AbusiveParents parents]].

* The Literature/BookOfJob (believed to be [[OlderThanDirt the oldest]] book of ''Literature/TheBible'') famously has this as its central premise. Job suffers several rapid-fire calamities, and his [[WithFriendsLikeThese friends]] and even his wife insist he must have done something truly awful to deserve it. Job maintains that he's been perfectly upright and even calls out God to explain Himself. God's answer is basically "[[OmniscientMoralityLicense I'm God, you're not, deal with it.]]" He does eventually reward Job's faith by restoring all that he had lost.

* In ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'', Othinus briefly traps Touma Kamijou in an alternate universe where he's Public Enemy #1. Everybody in the entire world hates him and tries to kill him on sight, even his own parents. Until he's pulled out of it, nobody will explain to him why they're trying to kill him.
* ''LightNovel/TheBoyWhoSworeRevengeOnTheWorld'' starts with Hardt going to a church, as is required by law, and getting an [Oracle] that explains his god-given [Occupation]. The moment his is revealed, the priest in charge explodes with rage for no given reason, orders him arrested, the knights torture him for sport, with the priest healing him up again so he doesn't die, and when he's taken back to his home village, the residents are all forced to stab him with a dagger to prove their "innocence", and lastly, his mother is killed for the "crime" of giving birth to him. Say hello to the birth of an OMBWTFBBQ necromancer who wants revenge on the world!

* Ed Byrne joked in ''Pedantic And Whimsical'' that women in general have an annoying habit of instead of telling their boyfriend/husband what they did wrong, they'll just "acted pissed off" and [[YouKnowWhatYouDid ]]let the man guess what he's done. So after the man has asked what he's done wrong, the woman will hit him with the line:
--> "'If you don't know what you've done, there's no point in me telling you.' [[FlatWhat What?]] You know it doesn't make any sense. Where's the logic in that statement? [...] It's like saying 'If you haven't eaten, there's no point in us making any dinner'."

--> "Well then, don't be surprised when the shit happens ''again!!''"

* In ''Fanfic/RobbReturns'', where Robb's mind [[TimeTravel returns to his past body from the point of his death in the series]], Theon is genuinely confused by Robb's newfound hostility towards him since they're still friends at this time in the timeline. It takes Ned pointing out how Robb's behaviour is unfair for the youth to act more civilly.

* In ''Fanfic/TheFifthAct'', PeggySue Cloud comes back in time and decides to kill Sephiroth to prevent his fall to insanity, killing spree at Nibelheim, and ultimate {{Omnicidal Mania|c}}. Sephiroth, for his part, has no idea what he did to provoke Cloud's murderous grudge, and can only speculate that he may have killed a loved one in the line of duty.
* ''Fanfic/FortuneLoverTGSBetaSaruRipTPlusEng0Point75SincereDotZip'': The basic premise of the fic is a ''Fortune Lover'' mod (implied to be created by A-Chan) in which the Katarina Claes of ''Fortune Lover'' is replaced with the Katarina Claes of ''LightNovel/{{My Next Life as a Villainess|AllRoutesLeadToDoom}}'', while everyone else's dialogs and event flags are left unaltered. The result is Katarina being labeled a villainess despite doing nothing on-screen to deserve it, being denounced for crimes that she never committed, and finally killed or exiled for absolutely no reason. There are even Katarina lines in the mod in which she asks why this is happening.

--> '''Harry''': That's what this is about? [[spoiler: The Marauders' joke line at Zonkos?]]

* In ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'', the heroes track down the guy who'll invent the chip which leads to the RobotWar in the future, and Sarah immediately tries to kill him in front of his family, even though he hasn't finished his research (much less known what would come of it). He calls her out on this after the situation's explained, but agrees to help destroy his work.

* In ''Film/TheManInTheIronMask'', Philippe had no clue why he was taken from the farm he grew up on, forced into the iron mask, and locked away. He recalls how when he was first imprisoned, all he did was shout for someone to say what he did. He eventually realized it must have something to do with his face. It isn't until the Musketeers rescue him that he learns it was because he's the identical twin of the king.

* One of the most important points of Creator/FranzKafka's ''Literature/TheTrial'' is that the reader is never let in on the charge against the protagonist. It's also ambiguous as to whether the protagonist himself knows.
* In Creator/JaneAusten's ''Literature/LoveAndFreindship'', [[MoralMyopia Laura]] is outraged at accusations of theft -- which she and Sophia have committed, and Sophia was caught doing.
-->''At this period of their Quarrel I entered the Library and was, as you may imagine, equally offended as Sophia at the ill-grounded Accusations of the malevolent and contemptible Macdonald.''
* In ''Literature/TheMoonstone'', Franklin, who's doing his best to find out what happened to Rachel's stolen Moonstone, has no idea why Rachel is suddenly so angry and cold towards him, and only seems to think less of him the more he tries to help. [[spoiler:Not until she tells him that she "saw him take the Moonstone with her own eyes."]]
* One Literature/SherlockHolmes story featured a young man, arrested for the murder of his father, showing no surprise and saying he deserved it. Watson thinks it proves guilt -- an innocent man would have had this trope. Holmes counter-argues that the man had to know the strength of the evidence against him, and since he raised his hand against his father he may have regarded his arrest as just.

* Pretty much any incarnation of ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' features this. Edmond has no idea why he's imprisoned until many years have passed in Chateau D'if. Then he's out for some serious ''revenge''.
* Aviendha is subject to this type of punishment by the Wise Ones for much of book twelve of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime''. She is ordered to do useless labour, which is the ultimate insult in the Aiel culture where even prisoners from enemy clans (''gai'shain'') are put to useful work. It turns out that [[spoiler:she is meant to complain rather than stoically bearing it. This shows the strength of character necessary to become a Wise One.]]
* In ''Literature/TheDarkHalf,'' the killer [[EnemyWithout George Stark]] has the same fingerprints as novelist Thad Beaumont. Sheriff Pangborn arrives at Thad's house to arrest him, and his first clue that Thad isn't the killer is that Thad is utterly confused by the arrest. Pangborn has been a cop long enough to know that criminals who know they're guilty just don't act like that.
* Specifically averted in Jack Vance's ''Literature/TheDemonPrinces'' quintet. Although it's been years since the Mount Pleasant raid and some of them (with still worse atrocities committed in the meantime) have put it out of their heads, Kirth Gersen goes out of his way to ensure the Demon Princes ''know'' who's bringing them undone and why.

* ''Literature/RoysBedoys'': Justified in “Stop Lying, Roys Bedoys!”, where Roys lies that Wen is in trouble and needs to stand against the wall, leaving her wondering what she did.
* ''Literature/AFlyWentBy'': When the boy threatens to whip the fox and accuses him of wanting to kill the little cow, he is confused and asks what he did.

** Snow White herself has no idea as to why Regina hates her and tries to kill her. [[spoiler: When Snow was a child, she was tricked by Cora into telling her about Regina's secret affair with the stable boy, Daniel. Given that Cora murdered Daniel, Regina's hostility is sympathetic. Sort of.]]
* ''Series/ElChavoDelOcho'': Doña Florinda usually slaps Don Ramón for things that weren't his fault. There were occasions he doesn't even know what she's faulting him for.
* Averted in ''Series/BabylonFive'', where a {{Mind Wipe}}d serial killer [[spoiler: turned mild-mannered monk]] has his memories forcibly returned to him because the people hunting him down want to make damn sure he knows why they're after him.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Friends}}'' has Phoebe giving Ross the cold shoulder because she's mad at him. He doesn't know ''why'' she's mad at him, though, and after some prodding, Phoebe admits that she doesn't know either. She's actually forgotten whatever it was Ross did to upset her, she just remembers being mad about it. [[spoiler:And then it turns out it's because [[MadAtADream she had a dream where Ross called her boring]].]]
* In one episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'', the VictimOfTheWeek is revealed to have had an affair before she was beaten into a coma. However, due to the extent of the brain damage, she loses all memory of the affair, so when she wakes up, she is extremely confused and upset about why her husband is acting so cold towards her.

* Played with for (black) humor in the Pirahna Brothers sketch of ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus''. There is an interview with one of their subordinates who said that Dinsdale would nail his head to the floor on a regular basis. Part of the joke was that Dinsdale never said why the minion needed to be punished, and the minion never asked, taking it as a given that he must have done ''something'' to deserve such treatment, even though he kept trying to apologize.
* One episode of ''Series/StargateSG1'' has a member of a planet the team gates to put Teal'c on trial. All they know at first is that it's for a crime he committed when he was First Prime of Apophis. Unfortunately, [[ButForMeItWasTuesday Teal'c was part of a number of atrocities while First Prime]], and it takes a while for him to remember the event in question, and even longer to recall the specifics.

* In ''Series/{{Loki|2021}}'' this is the specialty of the Time Variance Authority. Their goal is to make sure that all reality follows a single "Sacred Timeline", and they quickly imprison, try, and eliminate anyone who causes a reality to diverge from it. Of course, the TVA's existence is secret, almost no one even knows there are multiple realities, and no one knows when [[ForWantOfANail actions they're taking would create such a divergence]], so from their perspective TVA agents kidnap them out of nowhere and claim some random action of theirs was a crime they didn't even know it was possible to commit.
* In the holiday episode of ''Series/MrBean'', Mr. Bean is confused by his girlfriend's request for an engagement ring as a Christmas gift and instead thinks she was pointing at a portrait of a couple behind it. When she realizes what has happened, she runs out of the apartment in tearful frustration, slamming the door behind her. A [[InnocentlyInsensitive bewildered Mr. Bean]] can only think to ask, "W... what was wrong with it?"

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' the aeons provide both punishments and rewards, but both are equally bewildering. They exist to maintain balance, with various types concerned with balancing different things such as darkness and light, knowledge and ignorance, creation and oblivion. They apply their efforts based on the balance of the entire universe using metrics that are completely opaque, and do not bother trying to explain or justify their actions. This is particularly obvious in the case of the akhana aeons which balance life, as from the perspective of everybody else it wanders around murdering or healing people totally at random, having somehow determined their current state represents an imbalance.

* ''Webcomic/SleeplessDomain'': The main antagonist of the series is a shadowy inhuman entity known only as "her", who has a murderous grudge against protagonist Undine for reasons she refuses to say. She made her first appearance on the night that Undine's MagicalGirl teammates were killed in action, and shows up periodically to either [[TheMinionMaster direct the monsters of the night]] or simply taunt the broken survivor, always vanishing before anything resembling a straight answer can be obtained. Undine, meanwhile, wants nothing more than to know ''why'' any of this is happening. [[spoiler: 'her' seems to hate Undine because Undine survived her attempt to kill off all of Team Alchemical in order to render their leader Tessa vulnerable.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'';

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' has them accidentally discovering a new swear word, which they proceed to use constantly. Ms. Keane hears them say it in class and punishes them, but of course [[InnocentSwearing the girls don't know it's a bad word]], and when they ask her what they did, she answers, "[[YouKnowWhatYouDid You know perfectly well what you did!]]"
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' has Homer [[RunningGag strangling Bart]] when he learns he needs to go attend to other matters. He orders Bart to think about what he's done since he can't carry out the full punishment. Bart has no idea why Homer was strangling him, and it turns out that Homer doesn't know what Bart did wrong either.
* This happened to poor Fred twice on ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'':
** One time had Fred unintentionally switching places with a business tycoon and while Fred was doing the tycoon's job, the tycoon was going around town being an asshole to everyone. In the end, Fred goes home and gets beaten up by Barney and chewed out by Wilma, Barney, and Betty, much to his confusion.
** Another time, aliens had been making clones of Fred, and ''they'' were acting like assholes and ruining his reputation. It had a happier ending though, because when Fred told them how it happened, Wilma, Barney, and Betty simply thought he was under stress from his diet, and said he could go off it. [[DudeWheresMyRespect Fred was upset]], until he realized he [[HellYesMoment was off his diet.]]
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' has Angelica overhear a DepravedKidsShowHost using a curse word to describe the children she works with and, thinking it's the show's new special phrase, [[InnocentSwearing repeats it to her parents]]. She gets in trouble for it repeatedly, including when she tries to get her dad to tell her exactly which word in the sentence is the "bad" one. [[spoiler:By the end of the episode, she's still not entirely sure why the word's bad. Her dad just says that it "makes people feel bad".]]
* ''WesternAnimation/CourageTheCowardlyDog'': Almost every episode has Eustace complain "What did I do?" when Muriel chews him out on his bad behavior or hits him with a rolling pin, but this is because Eustace is [[JerkAss self-centered to the point it borders on sociopathy]].

* PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' when Marge needs Homer's help and finds him [[RunningGag strangling Bart]].
-->'''Homer:''' While I'm gone, boy, you think about what you did.
-->'''Bart:''' What ''did'' I do?!
-->'''Homer:''' You, uh...[[CatchPhrase Why, you little!]] ''(strangling Bart again)'' You need a reason for strangling, do you?! I'll fix your wagon!

DisproportionateRetribution will often inspire it. Even if the crime was real, and the punishment not disproportionate, punishing an amnesiac character tends to come off as wrong. Those with ignorance of the law, stemming from [[ChildrenAreInnocent child-like innocence]] or [[NaiveNewcomer unfamiliarity with the location]], generally come off almost as well. Especially if YouKnowWhatYouDid follows. KarmicMisfire and GuiltByAssociationGag are related but generally involve the target genuinely not being involved at all.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "The Conscience of the King", Kevin Riley is abruptly transferred to Engineering and believes he's being punished, but is completely bewildered about what he's being punished for. In reality, it's actually that Riley's life is in danger because he's one of only two surviving witnesses to a mass murder who can identify the perpetrator, but Kirk doesn't want to tell him this because he's afraid that Riley would try to take revenge if he knew that a suspect was on board, so he instead tries to protect him by moving him to a part of the ship where he's less likely to come into contact with the passengers.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' dwarfs can cause this effect. Dwarfs tend to treat ''everything'' as a deadly serious matter, and also tend to assume that anything people do that displeases them is a deliberate insult. In one notable case, the people of a fortress found themselves besieged by an army because they employed dwarfs to build it and accidentally underpaid them by a few pennies. As far as the dwarfs are concerned this was a deliberate attempt to rob them of their labor (again, by shortchanging them something like 0.001% of the total cost), so the appropriate response is to never tell them the payment was short, raise an army, then burn the place to the ground.

* In the ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' episode reviewing ''VideoGame/{{Oblivion}},'' Yahtzee notes that you, the player, is never told what your character did to end up in jail. He promptly comes up with the most badass crime he can think of, namely, a threesome with the Emperor's wife and hottest daughter on top of the desecrated corpse of a god.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' has them accidentally discovering a new swear word, which they proceed to use constantly. Ms. Keane hears them say it in class and punishes them, but of course [[InnocentSwearing the girls don't know it's a bad word]], and when they ask her what they did, she answers, "[[YouKnowWhatYouDid You know perfectly well what you did!]]"

* ''Fanfic/FortuneLoverTGSBetaSaruRipTPlusEng0Point75SincereDotZip'': The basic premise of the fic is a ''Fortune Lover'' mod (implied to be created by A-Chan) in which the Katarina Claes of ''Fortune Lover'' is replaced with the Katarina Claes of ''[[LightNovel/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom My Next Life As A Villainess]]'', while everyone else's dialogs and event flags are left unaltered. The result is Katarina being labeled a villainess despite doing nothing on-screen to deserve it, being denounced for crimes that she never committed, and finally killed or exiled for absolutely no reason. There are even Katarina lines in which she asks why this is happening.

* ''Fanfic/FortuneLoverTGSBetaSaruRipTPlusEng0Point75SincereDotZip'': The basic premise of the fic is a ''Fortune Lover'' mod (implied to be created by A-Chan) in which the Katarina Claes of ''Fortune Lover'' is replaced with the Katarina Claes of ''[[LightNovel/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom My Next Life As A Villainess]], while everyone else's dialogs and event flags are left unaltered. The result is Katarina being labeled a villainess despite doing nothing on-screen to deserve it, being denounced for crimes that she never committed, and finally killed or exiled for absolutely no reason. There are even Katarina lines in which she asks why this is happening.

* In ''Series/{{Loki}}'' this is the specialty of the Time Variance Authority. Their goal is to make sure that all reality follows a single "Sacred Timeline", and they quickly imprison, try, and eliminate anyone who causes a reality to diverge from it. Of course, the TVA's existence is secret, almost no one even knows there are multiple realities, and no one knows when [[ForWantOfANail actions they're taking would create such a divergence]], so from their perspective TVA agents kidnap them out of nowhere and claim some random action of theirs was a crime they didn't even know it was possible to commit.

* Ed Byrne joked in ''Pedantic And Whimsical'' that women in general have an annoying habit of instead of telling their boyfriend/husband what they did wrong, they'll just "acted pissed off" and let the man guess what he's done. So after the man has asked what he's done wrong, the woman will hit him with the line:

* ''Webcomic/SleeplessDomain'': The main antagonist of the series is a shadowy inhuman entity known only as "her", who has a murderous grudge against protagonist Undine for reasons she refuses to say. She made her first appearance on the night that Undine's MagicalGirl teammates were killed in action, and shows up periodically to either [[TheMinionMaster direct the monsters of the night]] or simply taunt the broken survivor, always vanishing before anything resembling a straight answer can be obtained. Undine, meanwhile, wants nothing more than to know ''why'' any of this is happening.

** "Sexual Harassment Panda" played Stan's trial for sexually harassing Cartman in this fashion (it was probably meant as a commentary on a real-life case of a grade-schooler being charged with sexual harassment for kissing a girl in his class).

* Attempts to teach small children and animals how to behave are at risk of falling foul of this trope if the time between the misdeed and the scolding is too long. Instead of correcting the misbehavior, this can actually make it worse by creating stress and confusion.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "The Conscience of the King", Kevin Riley sees his transfer to Engineering as this. In fact, Kirk is trying to protect him by keeping him as isolated as possible because he's one of the remaining witnesses who could identify Kodos the Executioner.

* Many a ''Website/GoAnimate'' [[YouAreGrounded "Grounded"]] video will have the target of the groundings punished for no reason or for reasons outside of their control.

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'',
** [[http://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-06-15 The enlightened Illuminati drones have no idea why Satan decides to get rid of them.]]
** A MirrorMonster [[http://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-06-28 ensures that Slick gets snubbed for no reason visible to him.]]

** And this trope is pretty much par for the course with Butters and his [[AbusiveParents parents]].

** One time had Fred unintentionally switching places with a business tycoon and while Fred was doing the tycoon's job, the tycoon was going around town being an asshole to everyone, and in the end, Fred goes home and gets beaten up by Barney and chewed out by Wilma, Barney, and Betty all the while Fred looks confused.

* People with autism will sometimes wonder why a friend blows up or ghosts them seemingly out of the blue. They may not have seen the hints the friend was dropping and will end up thinking this friend was doing this deliberately.
** The reverse is also possible. A lot of autistic people become incapable of speech when severely stressed- even incapable of explaining '''why''' they're stressed. Since socializing is often overwhelming or exhausting even if the other person is being perfectly friendly, this has led to a lot of hurtful misunderstandings.

* In the ''WebVideo/ZeroPunctuation'' episode reviewing ''VideoGame/{{Oblivion}},'' Yahtzee notes that you, the player, is never told what your character did to end up in jail. He promptly comes up with the most badass crime he can think of, namely, a threesome with the Emperor's wife and hottest daughter on top of the desecrated corpse of a god.